THE LIMEY
This is the newest offering
from the gifted Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape, Kafka,
and Out of Sight), featuring the newly-popular British actor Terence
Stamp (Chancellor Valorum from Episode I) and Peter Fonda
of Easy Rider fame. The plot is incredibly simple: Wilson, an aging
career criminal, has just been paroled from prison in England, only to
receive the news that his daughter Jenny, an aspiring actress, has died
in a car wreck in LA. With his gut telling him it was foul play,
the eponymous Limey goes to the States and, in his unsophisticated, thuggish
way, begins beating people up to find out the truth.
While the story is simple,
the film itself is anything but. It makes use of every chronological
trick in the book: flash forwards, flashbacks, mixed-up scenes, and even
a few clips from the 1967 movie Poor Cow (also starring Stamp) which
pop up as incredibly poignant memories of Wilson's most treasured moments
with his wife and daughter. The conversations in the film are handled
in an innovative manner: Soderbergh would film a conversation in its entirety
in three or four different locations--a bar, someone's house, the beach,
the inside of a car--and mix-and-match the scenes at random. So Wilson
will ask a character a question at a table in a restaurant, and then the
scene will change and they'll be answering while strolling down an LA street.
It's disconcerting at first, but you begin to appreciate its meaning as
the film goes on. The idea is that Wilson is remembering the events
of the movie after the fact, and like Stamp pointed out in an interview,
you can clearly remember what someone said to you, but you won't always
know exactly where you were when they said it. These techniques give
the crime/thriller movie a languid, almost dreamlike feel. In fact,
some sequences are practically poetic in their beauty. In this regard,
THE LIMEY is a true original: a beautiful thriller.
The performances are all top-notch--there
are long passages just focusing on Stamp's battered, aged face, but they
don't feel long at the time--the story of Wilson's life is shown so clearly
there that you feel like you could watch him for hours. But
there's more than just introspection; the Limey is still a fish out of
water, and his dealings with people are humorously complicated by his use
of thirty-year-old Cockney street slang. And Peter Fonda, as the
slimy record producer villain, is just as memorable. He isn't cartoonish
or superhuman--he's just a guy who's really never understood the consequences
of his actions, even when they're staring him down the barrel of a .38
pistol.
The Limey
THE GOOD: The acting and the direction are wonderful,
and the end is heartbreaking. Also, for those of you that care, this
has to be the most realistic violence I've seen in a crime movie.
THE BAD: The plot is bare-bare-bare bones; what
you see here is pretty much what you get. Everything is done at maximum
low-key. Could put some people to sleep.
BOTTOM LINE: If you're not afraid to invest a
little thought into a movie, THE LIMEY is a gem.
MY RATING: 80